When police rounded up 18 terror suspects around Toronto in 2006, they found copies of manifestos with titles such as The Book of Jihad, The Virtues of Jihad, Fundamental Concepts Regarding Al-Jihad and 39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad.
Such reading materials now enjoy “influence and popularity” in Canada, says a secret government study that identifies the ideologues whose writings it says are promoting “violent jihad” among Canadians. The report by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre names Sayed Qutb, Abdullah Azzam and Ibn Taymiyah as the “key ideologues whose works have contributed to Islamist radicalization in Canada.”
The classified intelligence report, released under the Access to Information Act, is one of dozens of studies that analyze why some Canadians participate in al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist activities. A report by the RCMP National Security Criminal Investigations Section calls Qutb “the ideological father” of al-Qaeda. “Qutb validated extreme violence in the cause of faith, so ‘Islamic terrorism’ could more accurately be called ‘Qutbian terrorism,’ the RCMP report says.
